The sports ministry and SAI officials are miffed with the way various national sports federations ignored an important international conference on sports medicine that was held in Capital last week. Except for the SAI coaches, there were hardly any takers.

“They have not realised the importance of such a meet. It was meant to help all concerned take advantage of several experts from abroad on one platform. But none of the federations bothered to send a representative for even one session, though the conference was held for three days,” said a ministry official.

“We have 19 disciplines for the 2010 Games and surprisingly not a single representative had turned up from the national federations,” added the official.

Incidentally, IOA chief and Organising Committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi inaugurated the conference. Only the other member present on the occasion was Games Technical Conduct Committee (GTCC) chief KP Singh Deo.

But it was not same for others. Even though Hockey India did not nominate anyone, hockey psychotherapist Srikanth from SAI Centre, Bangalore, came on his own. “It was a wonderful Congress and we all enjoyed it thoroughly because we could update ourselves,” he said.

Vandana Tanwar with the table tennis team and Jyoti from Andhra Pradesh added such sessions helped them refurbish themselves on the needs of treating sportspersons.

“Some papers we picked up from the foreign experts would be very useful,” said Tanwar. “We are already looking forward to the pre-Games Congress next year,” added Jyoti and Srikanth.